CRAZY LIKE CHISCA. Lauren Crews told me that people think he’s crazy. After all, he paddled a canoe from the Twin Cities to New Orleans – just him and his dog. He rode a bike to New Orleans, too, all the way down Highway 61 in the summer, the heat driving him dizzy into ditches. After all, for more than a decade he’s been trying to develop property ...

WE’RE RELATED. For a few years, Nora was in a handbell choir at our church. The choir was invited to perform here and there. Being an Episcopal church, those trips were more a celebration than a solemn occasion, and, like the service itself, food and drink were central to the issue at hand. I tagged along because the here and there included roux-full places like ...

BOOM. HERE’S TO IRELAND. Recently, Ireland became the first country in the world to legalize same-sex marriage by popular vote. Ireland. Stereotypically, a country where conservative is a matter of degree not choice, where killing each other over religion isn’t current news but DNA, where progress is measured in pints. Boom. Many of my fellow boomers wonder what ...

WHEN YOU’RE HOME, YOU CAN HEAR IT. I was recently reminded of a story I heard from an actor friend years ago when he was in town for a commercial I was making. His name was Robert Lansing – if you’re old enough, you’ll remember him from TV’s 12 O’clock High. While making a movie in Georgia, he and a production ...

A MEASURE OF JOURNALISM. As I wondered what to write about while on vacation, I was bailed out by New York Times Public Editor Margaret Sullivan and my friend Jay Martin who sent me her article. Ms. Sullivan upon ending her teaching stint at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism left these parting words for her students and posted them: “1. About social media.